The Wedding March

Like Foolish Wives, Greed and Queen Kelly, The Wedding March (originally made in two parts, of which only the first is extant) survives as a mutilated masterpiece, even this first part having been cut from 14 reels to ll. Charting the ill-starred romance between a Viennese prince (Stroheim in an unusually sympathetic role) and a lowly commoner (Wray), the film would perhaps appear to be its cynical creator's most romantic work, were it not for the marvellously detailed portrait of the corruption of society in general, rich and poor. Nevertheless, it is the love scenes, played beneath shimmering apple blossoms in lyrical soft focus, that stick in the memory, ironically turning what is now the film's ending - the frustration of that love - into one of the director's most bitterly pessimistic scenes.